Marty Supreme refers to an idealised, narcissistic self-perception of the main character Marty, a New York ping pong prodigy driven by ambition and selfishness to the extreme.
Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is an anti-hero, as was Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976), but even more unlikeable because, unlike Travis Bickle, Marty has no significant, untreated mental health issues.
Marty has an inflated belief he’s the best table tennis player in the world and feels entitled within the sport.
1952: Marty Mauser (a word play on Mickey Mouse? He is, after all, a boy in long pants.), 23 years old, puts one-hundred-and-10-per cent into everything he does, even as a shoe salesman for his uncle.
Self-absorbed in his own importance, he takes advantage of anyone within his grift.
One is his married childhood friend Rachel (Odessa A’zion) with whom he has an affair, consequences not ever considered.
His overbearing mother (Fran Drescher, speaking in the same annoying voice in TV’s The Nanny) is supported by Marty’s uncle (Larry “Ratso” Sloman) who encourages Marty to pursue work as a shoe salesman instead of focussing on playing table tennis.
I wanted to be entertained and Timothée Chalamet did that within the skin of his unprincipled character.
The entire two-and-a-half hours was, however, a relationship with Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to roll a massive boulder uphill in the underworld for all eternity.
I questioned the number of Oscar, BAFTA, SAG, and Golden Globe nominations, but agreed with Chalamet’s Best Actor nominations.
He tackles a character so contemptuous, so obnoxious, every bit a challenge from what he’s done before, that his performance as a repugnant motor-mouthed reprobate was admirable.
The whole of the film was dark and I’m not suggesting characterised by cynical themes, morally ambiguous characters, a bleak or pessimistic tone with gritty content.
It’s dark because Darius Khondji’s cinematography looks underexposed, as if he’d sticky-taped his sunglasses to the camera lens.
Most scenes take place in daytime or within lighted rooms, yet eyes struggle to discern content, the mise en scène of production value.
The film’s look wasn’t reminiscent of 1940s film noir or German expressionism.
Howard Hawks is recognised as the director who popularised and mastered “overlapping dialogue” (dialogue upon dialogue) in American films, particularly during the screwball comedy era.
He instructed actors to speak quickly and interrupt or jump on each other’s lines creating a chaotic conversational style.
Robert Altman pioneered the use of overlapping dialogue where multiple actors speak at once creating a chaotic, unscripted feel in film as in MASH (1970) and Nashville (1975).
The modern standard-bearer for this dialogue style today is Quentin Tarantino.
Overlapping dialogue is taken to the utmost in Marty Supreme, so much so that dialogue becomes loud, noisy sound, like being inside a room with no sound baffling and which repeatedly reverberates, echo upon echo.
Just one of many examples, there’s a sequence of a table tennis commentator screaming into a microphone in Japanese (no subtitles provided) while participants in the game and onlookers engage in conversation.
Result?
A garble of undecipherable pandemonium.
Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a glamorous, but faded 1950s movie star in a loveless marriage.
She becomes entangled with the ambitious Marty as an escape and potential investment.
She’s revitalised by Marty’s chaotic energy, which is a polite way of saying they do it several times.
She’s cougar to a skinny, bespectacled, impulsive and imprudent cub.
Pointless?
As entertainment, yes; the movie does, however, make a point about the relentless nature of American ambition, ego and the inevitability of facing consequences for one’s actions.
The rating is mainly for Chalamet’s performance.
